#but then realized she and johnny would have the same color blindness...which is also MY colorblindness

[waspgrave]

Can I get 1,2, and 4 in favorites for Val?? 👀

favorites. 1 -  favorite place in night city

Usually it's the sort of places any other might hate - lived in areas bustling with life at all hours of day or night. It's safer when it's like that, no way to get singled out or followed without drawing someone else's eye in the process. If not that, then on top of any sort of building. Nowhere particularly special as long as it’s got the view and isn’t a risk to potentially die on.

favorites. 2 - favorite color

Probably sunshine yellow, cherry red, or cobalt blue. Naturally, these are colors that specifically look good on her. Green can die. 

favorites. 4 - favorite vehicle. do they prefer cars or motorcycles?

She prefers motorcycles for maneuverability, but appreciates how hard her poor car works to deal with her shit as much as it does (have u seen the hell that is V’s backseat lmao). Her favorite motorcycle is Jackie's Arch and her Yaiba Kusanagi

[missscarletta7]

The Broken Crown- Chapter 2

Summary: All Margaret Shelby ever wanted, was the opportunity to write her own story. Only now is she beginning to realize that her brother may have already written it for her...

Hello! Enjoy chapter 2!

OoOoOo

"Keep spendin' most our lives, Livin' in the gangsta's paradise,

Tell me why are we so blind to see,

That the ones we hurt, are you and me"

~Gangsters Paradise~

1919

"Mags." Was the first thing the young girl heard as she was gently shaken awake, "Go lay in your bed, eh?"

Upon half-opening her eyes, she saw it was Tommy who had been talking to her. Maggie only then realized she had fallen asleep sitting upright. She responded by rubbing her neck and slowly nodding. Clumsily she got off the bed with her journal in hand.

It was early. The exact time she wasn't sure, but sunlight wasn't streaming through the window yet. She entered the quiet hallway, navigating herself to her bedroom in the darkness. When she opened her door, she discovered a figure standing in the middle of the half-lit room changing clothes.

"There you are," Ada whispered out, shimming out of her slip, "Was wondering what happened to you."

"Slept in Tommy's room," She explained, yawning lightly. "Just get in? What time is it?"

Her sister nodded as she continued to change into a nightdress, slipping the fabric over her head. "It's just past four." She informed as the younger girl motioned her way around her sister to flop onto the bed, making it creak from the force of body weight.

"How was your night?" asked Maggie, moving to make her head more comfortable on the old shapeless pillow.

"Romantic." The older girl hummed, sliding into bed next to her sister. "I've never felt this way about anyone."

Maggie turned her body on her side. "Wish I could put a name and face to this mystery man." She watched her sister's eyes flash with guilt. At the realization of her thoughts were now said aloud, regret formed in the pit of Maggie’s stomach.

"I promise I'll tell you sooner than you think, I just-" Ada didn't have to finish the sentence for Maggie to understand what she was going to say: 'I just can't deal with our brothers if they find out '.

"I know Ada," was the last thing the sleepy girl said before closing her eyes and drifting back to sleep.

Eventually, she woke up again around seven in the morning. Carefully, she got out of bed trying not to wake up her sleeping sister, and dressed accordingly in one of Ada's old dresses. She also made sure to pack her journal into her book bag before making her way downstairs. Once in the kitchen, she saw Tommy reading the paper and Finn eating his breakfast.

"Morning." She said, grabbing a bowl and spoon to scoop mushy porridge out of a metal pot, which was sitting on top of the only working stove burner. Polly had most likely prepared it for them. "How did you sleep?"

Tommy knew that question was directed to him, "Better than I have in weeks." This made his sister smile as she sat down in the chair next to him. "Your writing has improved. But then again, I haven't heard you share your work since you were twelve. Pol says you won't even share with her or Ada. Why's that?" He was genuinely curious.

"I don't think it's ready to be shared yet," Maggie shrugged.

He peered at her as he set the paper down onto the table, "You shared last night."

"Only to put you to sleep." She countered, bringing the spoon to her mouth to consume the beige-colored substance.

"Going to have to sometime," he spoke sincerely. "How else are you going to become a writer, eh?"

He was right, she knew that, but right now, her writing felt sacred. As if her words were only meant for her. She was still coming face to face with a paradoxical problem. Every time she would write something down, it would instantly not be good enough. The pages of her journal seemed to have more scribbled-out lines than actual words. She just couldn't explain this feeling properly, and if she couldn't express her feelings in words, how could she write? No, sharing her words would only lead to not being understood. Her thoughts were soon interrupted by the opening and slamming of the front door.

"Tommy!" John angrily stormed into the kitchen, "It's Danny! Those fucking Wops got a hit on him."

Tommy answered back by pushing himself out of his chair and hurriedly following his brother out of the home. Finn quickly tried to follow, but Maggie grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, "Let go Mags!" he cried out.

Maggie sighed, "C'mon, let's get you ready for school." Finn could only respond with a groan, allowing his sister to lead him upstairs.

OoOoOo

The next day, a smiling Maggie was squished between John and Finn in the family car. She could barely move without hearing a complaint from John, but she didn't care, she was too excited. They were all on their way to the fair, which had been set up right outside of Birmingham. It had been so long since she had been to one. They were almost there, and she could see the big red and white striped tent peaking over the trees in the distance, so she was confused when Tommy parked the car in a clearing that was still a good distance away.

Arthur spoke up at once, "Thought you said we were going to the fair"

"Yeah, what are we doing?" She asked nervously, leaning her elbows against the front seat.

"We have business first. C'mon, bring your wits." Tommy said getting out of the car with John and Arthur following. He glanced over to his younger siblings noticing they were trying to do the same. " You and Finn stay by the car."

"Seriously?" She just wanted to have a normal day at the fair with her family. Was that too much to ask?

Tommy pointed at her to emphasize. "Stay by the car, Mags."

"What business?" Arthur questioned.

"That's the Lee family," She heard John say.

Great the Lees, thought Maggie sarcastically, as she sank into the seat. Though she did perk herself up when she saw a familiar face walking towards the car.

"Hi, Johnny!" She smiled and waved at the man.

"Well hello pretty lady," Johnny Dogs greeted as he approached the car. "Tell me, have you seen a lass named Maggie?" The teasing tone of his voice was prominent. He had not changed a bit in the four years his presence had been absent.

The girl giggled slightly at his antics, and with a playful air replied, "I'm Maggie."

"You canna be her." He overly acted out in disbelief, "Last time I saw her she was but a child!"

"Hang on a minute," They all heard Arthur say, "You're not swapping the family car for a bloody horse!"

Johnny turned around and quickly walked up to the oldest Shelby, "Of course we're not swapping it. Huh? That would be mad!"

"We're going to play two up," Tommy explained, handing a coin over to the family friend.

"Jesus." Arthur breathed out anxiously, as they all watched the pair toss their coins into the grass and lean forward to get a better view. Silently, Tommy handed over the keys to the car, much to the irritation of the eldest, "I knew it. Tommy, you bloody idiot!"

"Shut up Arthur. I won," Tommy told him, "I promised Johnny I'd let him have a spin in the car if he lost." He watched as the relief washed over his brother's face but was interrupted by collective snickering. He turned to the three men dangerously, "Are you Lee boys laughing at my brother? Are you? Eh? I asked you a question!"

"Tommy! Tommy, c'mon it's just a craic." Johnny reasoned, trying to keep everyone calm, "Get your family out of here and go enjoy yourselves at the fair before they start a war." Johnny then turned to the Lees, and Maggie was able to make out most of what he said. It had something to do about the grandfather she never met before one of the Lees replied, "Yeah, but his mother was a Diddicoy whore."

That had done it. Whipping his weaponized hat off of his head, Tommy slashed at the man's face. Arthur and John quickly joined in. Blood could be seen gushing from their faces as they all yelled obscenities at one another. Finn looked in awe at his brothers, his gaze never wavering from the fight, but Maggie felt sick.

OoOoOo

An hour later they had finally reached their original destination. Looking and walking around the fair was an amazing experience. The many rides, animals, oddities, and food all in one place were a wonderment to the many families that came out from all over the area. Yet, Maggie's level of enthusiasm was less than what Tommy had expected. She couldn't shut up most of the way there, now she was as silent as a stone.

"What's the matter with you, eh?" Tommy questioned as they walked around the fairgrounds together, "Did you want to take a spin on the big wheel ride?" He pointed up to the giant machine with carriages that slowly spun in circles.

She asked quietly, "Did you have to hurt them?" Sure, Maggie knew what her brothers did. She would be naive if she said she didn't, but she had never been a witness to it. The violence that she had often heard others speak of was now forever ingrained in her memory, becoming a standard for their future offenses. "The Lee's." She clarified although she was certain he knew what she was talking about.

"They were disrespecting us Mags," He explained as if she were younger than Finn. "You heard them."

Tommy had always tried to keep her in the dark about their business practices, which was easy when she was younger. Unlike Finn, she had always kept her nose in a book, never really paying attention to the transgressions of her siblings. But now she was beginning to notice and was starting to ask questions he'd rather not answer.

"You couldn't walk away?" Maggie inquired, looking towards anywhere but his face.

He remained silent for a moment before stiffly asking, "Do you want to get on the fucking wheel ride or not?" That was Tommy-ese for 'drop it', so she did, and added herself to the growing line. Tommy followed her lead, standing behind her he pulled a cigarette out to smoke as they waited.

Maggie was quiet the entire duration of the drive back home. The setting sun rays peeked through the gray smog as they entered Small Heath, they all noticed the place had been trashed. Broken and ripped furniture looked like they were just tossed in the streets and all those who watched the Shelby car roll slowly down the street managed to give them all a dirty look.

Arthur was the first to speak up, "Now, what the bloody hells been going on here?"

OoOoOo

Apparently, from what she gathered it had been the new copper that had been behind the trashing of their neighborhood. Maggie and Cara walked through the crowd, as they recounted the events of each other's day. Thankfully the Ryans dress shop had been spared from the destruction and Maggie told her friend everything about the fair, excluding the violent beginning of course. In front of them stood a pile of portraits that had been gathered from around all the homes and businesses of the community. Once they were lit on fire, familiar faces were lit up as well to contrast the darkness. They both soon saw Ross with a crowd of men, most likely coworkers from the BSA. Once he saw them, he waved them off and began moving toward the girls.

"Are you ever going to tell him?" Maggie asked her friend, as they watched the young man weaving his way through the crowd of people.

"I will!" Cara defended before adding, "Eventually." Maggie tried to hide her smile.

"All right ladies?" Ross greeted once he was near enough.

"So, what's all this about then?" Cara questioned somewhat flirtatiously, pointing at the heap of portraits.

"Ask Mags," Ross replied, sending the dark-haired girl a smirk, "It's her brothers that have organized all this, went 'round taking everyone's pictures."

"Oh right, because they run everything by me first." she joked, causing both her friends to chuckle. Cara soon took over in leading the conversation, but Maggie was only half paying attention. Curiously, she watched as Tommy spoke with a man that she had never seen before. He must have felt her gaze because he found her face in the crowd, causing Maggie to quickly divert her stare off her brother. Ross then pulled out a flask from a pocket inside his dark coat.

"Care for a swig?" He asked them, shaking the container slightly. Drinking alcohol was something she had never really made into a habit, for her it was only for special occasions. Without hesitation, Cara took the silver flask from his hand and drank a few gulps before passing it on to Maggie. Maggie glanced back to her brother, who was no longer watching her, but instead had gone back to his discussion with the man who was now writing something down on a pad of paper.

She grabbed the small open bottle in her hand and raised it to her friends, "Cheers." The liquid burned in her mouth, but she forced herself to swallow. She coughed at the sensation, making Cara laugh as she took the flask back in her hand, downing what was inside again. The small group of friends joked and drank for the next hour or so, as the flames of the bonfire created a comforting warmth over the burning expressionless eyes of his majesty the king.

OoOoOo

After drinking so much during the bonfire, Cara must not have been feeling too well because she didn't show up to school the next day. Not only that, but it also seemed as though Finn decided to skip again. So unfortunately for Maggie, she was fated to walk home alone. Slung over her shoulder was her book bag which carried a few books, pens, and her journal. As she walked past the first alleyway, she felt a presence quickly appear next to her.

"In need of some company?" Ross asked, tossing his finished cigarette onto the pavement.

"That would be nice." She smiled up at his tall frame, which had a good five inches on her.

He motioned to the bookbag that rested on her shoulder, "Let me help with that."

"I can carry it myself." She calmly asserted, which made the young man grin.

"Now how would it look to all these people around us if I didn't help you with that, Hm?" He waved his index finger around to point at various people going about their day, "Word will get back to my mum, and she'd beat me for not being the gallant gentleman she raised. And you'd be responsible for that. I'm only trying to save you from a guilty conscience later on."

She supposed she shouldn't let that happen. With a small smile, she passed the bag to him which he took gladly.

"Last night was fun, eh?" He continued, slinging her bag over his shoulder.

"It was," she replied, allowing her mind to wander through the fresh memories. "Though I think Cara had too much fun."

"Sounds like her," he snickered out, "Never scared of fun."

"What else do you think about her?" The dark-haired girl pressed.

"Who, Cara?" He asked and Maggie nodded. "I dunno." He shrugged, adding, "Nice I suppose."

"Oh c'mon, you have to see the way she looks at you" Maggie alluded.

"Never noticed." He admitted, looking uncomfortable.

She knew she couldn't push the matter any further than that. It was time to change the subject, "How's work?"

"Factory is on strike again." He answered her, appearing more relaxed, "Freddie thinks we should be compensated more. Guess we'd need that in order to make up for the wages we've lost."

She couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes. Of course, Freddy had something to do with this. Though she always admired her brothers' old friend for sticking to his beliefs, she silently judged anyone whose beliefs ranged on the spectrum of radical. "Freddie needs to be more careful. As do you, he's going to get everyone in some serious trouble."

He smiled at her worried words, "He'll be fine. I heard from other workers that he skipped town after the raid. As for me, I think that a bit of trouble is the only way to get what you want."

They had just turned onto Watery Lane, their pace began to slow until they eventually stopped just across the street from the front door of her home. "You didn't have to walk me all the way home, you know," she told him as he handed her book bag back.

His hazel eyes meet her blue ones, "I'd do anything for you, Margaret," he declared seriously. She couldn't help but think that there was a hidden meaning in his words. Was she reading too much into this? He must have meant that as her friend, right?

"I-," she started.

"Maggie!" Tommy's voice rang out.

Maggie turned her head to see her brother as he made his way toward them. The girl's heart clenched at the thought of what he was going to do. Her mind had quickly jumped back to the memory of yesterday, the slashing, the anger, the blood. She glanced over to Ross, whose expression went from nervous to stoic in a matter of seconds.

"Go inside," Tommy instructed once he stood close enough to the two teens.

"But-"

"Now Mags," he commanded with a low voice. Coolly, Tommy took a drag from his cigarette that was resting in between his fingers, not taking his eyes off Ross.

With a huff and a final look towards her friend, Maggie bid him farewell before swiftly walking toward the front door of her family home. Once the dark-haired girl was out of earshot Ross apprehensively spoke, "Mr. Shelby I- I was just walking her home, I wasn't trying to-"

"I know Ross," Tommy assured the anxious young man, tossing his finished cigarette to the ground. Pol had told him that the young Murray lad had helped look after his sister while he and his brothers were away in France. Had even heard a rumor amongst some of the younger men in the betting shop that he knocked the shit out of another boy who was sniffing around Margaret. If that was true, Tommy felt indebted. He was a busy man, so he cut to the chase, "You beat a bloke that was giving Maggie trouble?"

Ross modestly nodded at his question. "You're a good lad." The gangster commended, passing the young man one of his cigarettes from its silver metal casing. He also lit a match to assist him with lighting it. "Is your Uncle Ian still living in Dublin?"

Ross had to admit, he wasn't expecting the line of questioning to head in this direction. Nevertheless, he nodded once again, removing the rolled tobacco from his lips to allow a puff of smoke to escape from his lungs. The young man's confusion ceased when he watched Tommy pull out two pounds sterling from his pocket. Ross’s eyes couldn't help but widen at the act.

"Good, I want you to do me a favor. Call him and tell him to ask around all the local pubs in town if they know anything about a barmaid named Grace Burgess." As much as Tommy wanted to say he didn't care about this new woman who had found herself working at The Garrison, he needed to know exactly where she came from and if she was telling the truth. Digging out another pound he said, "Here send this to your uncle too."

"I will Mr. Shelby," he assured, accepting the coins in his outreached hand.

Tommy turned away and began walking toward his home, without looking back he added, "Welcome to the Peaky Blinders, Ross."

OoOoOo

When Maggie entered her home, she found Polly sitting in the kitchen reading a newspaper and drinking tea. "Hello, love. How was school?"

"Fine." She replied curtly, dropping her book bag onto the floor beside the table. She immediately moved to the window, looking out just in time to see Tommy lighting a cigarette for Ross. Relief washed over Maggie, this conversation thankfully seemed as though it wouldn't involve fists... or razor blades.

Polly's eyes were now on her, "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing." Maggie tore herself away from the window to sit down opposite her aunt, pulling out her journal and pen from the book bag next to her feet. Tommy ended up entering the kitchen not two minutes later.

"I hope you didn't tell my friend that you'd hurt him." Maggie told her brother much more boldly than she felt, "He was just being kind."

He stared at her for a moment before replying knowingly, "Now why would I hurt my newest recruit." With that, he exited into the betting shop closing the doors behind him. She gapped, still looking at the shut doors trying to process how Tommy could ever involve her friend in whatever schemes he was engaging in.

Her emotions must have shown all over her face because her aunt chuckled slightly. "I wouldn't worry too much about your friend," Polly told her eyes still on the black and white paper. But Maggie couldn't stop herself from slumping into the old wooden chair before she continued writing, ultimately stopping when she felt her sister's presence enter the room.

"Good of you to join us," Polly said to Ada from behind her newspaper. "Where have you been all day?

"In bed," Ada replied. "Couldn't sleep, then I couldn't wake up, then I was cold, and then I had to go for a wee. Then I was with this bear on a boat, but that was just a dream, then I was hungry." Maggie looked up from her journal once again to see that Ada took the empty seat between her and their aunt with a massive slice of bread with a jar of jam in hand.

Maggie looked pointedly at the last of the bread that she had made recently, "Jesus Ada, save some food for the rest of us."

Ada stuck her tongue out, before looking at her aunt, "Why are you reading the paper?" Ada inquired.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Polly questioned back, picking up her teacup.

"I've never seen you read the paper. I've only ever seen you light fires with them." The older Shelby sister continued, taking a bite of her food.

"BSA is on strike" Polly explained, "The miners are on strike. IRA are killing our boys, ten a day." Though when Polly stopped talking, she continued to stare at Ada eating.

The older girl soon noticed her aunt's gaze. "What?" She asked in between her chewing.

"Stand up," Polly commanded.

"Why?" Ada questioned.

"Just stand up," Polly ordered standing up herself, eventually Ada compiled, "Side on," Polly added and Ada motioned her body to face to the side. Maggie was taken aback when Polly suddenly cupped one of her sisters' breasts.

Though Ada was much more reactionary, "What are you doing?!"

"Ada, how late are you?" Polly asked seriously and Maggie couldn't stop her mouth as it fell open slightly.

"One week." Not too bad, Maggie thought. "Five weeks," Ada amended. It wasn't ideal, but maybe she was due any day now. "Seven, if you count weekends." The girl corrected herself once again.

"Holy Fuck, "Maggie shook her head in disbelief.

Ada seemed desperate for this not to be the reality, "I think it's a lack of iron. I got some tablets." She explained to them, as Polly sat back down in her chair.

"But they didn't work." Their aunt concluded.

Ada too sat back down, "No."

Maggie gulped at her sister's answer and looked to her aunt, watching Polly as she took a deep breath. The thought process could not be seen on her face, but the young girls knew that the situation was being meticulously addressed in her mind. "Get dressed. We're going to the midwife. Let's just make sure you are before anyone makes any rash decisions."

Ada nodded, holding back the tears that threatened to spill over. Maggie's heart clenched, and moved her hand over her sisters, squeezing it slightly. Whatever was to come, they would weather through it together.

[anthropwashere]

deadfic: welcome the unknown

Another one for @goodintentionswipfest, and the oldest of the lot I’ll be posting by a significant margin! As in written in 2009 old. You’ve been warned.

Gonna put the whole fic under a readmore because JTHM fics have one setting and that’s Upsetting, so have some naval gazing from me first.

2009 was uhhhhh, some kind of year for me. It was the year I graduated high school, and the year I was a little bit homeless, and the year I wished I was a little bit homeless for longer so I could have avoided some bananas shit, and the year I spent waiting on tenterhooks mid-recession before I could run from a ehhh home life off to the military.

18 year old anthrop was working through some shit while writing this thing, is what I'm saying.

This was intended as a prequel to a fic I was working on in high school, while also being kind of a stand alone fic? If you've been with me since my JTHM days (wow) you'll recognize what it might have been for, but otherwise don't worry about it. This is a bit all over the place but there are still a lot of pieces I'm fond of and honestly, it's nice to see where I was as a writer and how far I've come in comparison? Too many of us fandom writers destroy huge swaths of our work out of this terribly sad and unnecessary shame for liking "cringy" things, and to this day I regret doing the same to virtually all the things I wrote for my first few fandoms. Cheesy and heavy-handed as this fic is, it's nice to have around still, you know? I cared about this fic. Working on it kept me sane during an extremely shitty summer. I dearly wish I still had the first draft, which I remember writing in different colored markers on folded sheets of computer paper hunched up in any random little corner I could get some time alone. Alas, like 98% of the rest of my things pre-military, it's gone for good.

Title comes from Robbers on High Street's "The Fatalist," which sure was a song I had on repeat a lot back in 2009.

=

Everywhere is dirty. Filth and stink and dead particles on everything he touches. He'd fallen asleep, and somebody had broken into his house and poured the offal of a thousand trash cans onto everything and smeared it in deep. 

Asshole. 

Really though, they are all assholes. Shit-smeared animals groping around on all fours, blind and deaf and desensitized to whatever little good was left in the world around them. 

They make so much noise. All they do is scream, and whenever someone manages to gasp out a non sequitur the whole world applauds, casting them into the history books for the next generation to draw penises upon their photographs. It is all a matter of course.

It can't just be him that sees this. One look outside is enough to prove his point. Why else would he board up all the windows? To keep the assholes from looking in, of course.

The assholes are everywhere these days, screaming and fucking. Fucking. They're good at that too. Reproduction. Bucking hips and nails across skin and incredible, terrible intimacy, the exchanging of fluids. Disease of the flesh, fever of the mind. A new generation born in every positive pregnancy test, a new generation dead in every street corner abortion clinic. Babies. Disgusting, germ-ridden things. Oh God, don't let it touch him with its fat little hands shiny with saliva and the green ooze that won't cease dripping from the holes in its face. He doesn't know what'll happen, what he'll do if this thing gets too close, but he has ideas, and none of them are pleasant.

He always has ideas.

He blinks, and the baby and the stinking slut mother cooing at it with too-red lips and salon-styled hair and the bus and the roaring all vanish. He stumbles and knocks an elbow against the dresser.

The smell in here is somehow worse now. Like old vomit in high summer. Is it vomit? Is it his vomit?

He decides it's better not to now, at least not now. He feels a strange mood coming. High tide comes to drown the starfish, already dried by the sun. Perhaps it is a mood he needs, but then again, perhaps it comes too late.

Something cracks, and the edges go soft and drip in a puddle of wax.

He burns his fingers by candlelight.

=

"Johnny?"

"Bunny?"

His throat burns. It hurts to breathe.

"Oh thank God, you can hear me again. You're back."

"What—" He breaks off, coughing. Blood in his mouth, on his teeth. He licks them clean and swallows. "What are you talking about?"

Bunny sounds small and tired in his ears—

Mind?

—and there was fear, Johnny can hear it licking at the corners of Bunny's— 

His?

—voice, but it has faded with time. Johnny suspects he has been asleep for a very long time.

 "I've been trying to reach you for… God, I don't even know how long." Bunny trails off.

He looks around, his eyes struggling to see in the pre-dawn light trickling in through a dozen half-circle windows on the floor above wherever he is. More by the smell than anything, he realizes he is surrounded by blood and bodies. A part of him knows he shouldn't be comforted by this, shouldn't find this scene familiar.

And yet.

"I was scared, Nny."

He hiccups, chokes, and spits out three bullets.

=

The mirror is laughing at him.

He sneers at it. Squints as two left hands do two different things, almost identical but the blur is still visible, still there.

He was wrong, he knows that now. There isn't just one person, one world, one reality on the other side of the mirror. There are dozens, maybe hundreds. Maybe thousands. Not all at once, of course, but there seems to be another pair of eyes staring back, another mouth talking at everyone and no one, each time he looks hard enough, long enough. The edges blur, fingers drag in slow-motion arcs, teeth where teeth shouldn't be, a hundred shades of skin and hair and eyes.

He can't remember the last time he showered.

=

“You look like shit, Nny,” observes the Burger Boy.

“Yes.”

“You really should do something about it.”

“Yes.”

He drives the pen through the paper and carves something into the wood that later he won't understand.

=

Greasy. He is so greasy. The others in the mirror bow out of the way to let him see the unwashed, true reflection of himself. He makes a face, drags his cheeks down to his jaw and waggles his tongue, and the reflection follows accordingly. No blur. 

Yep, that’s him all over.

Devi screams, her face set in a terrified, furious, how-could-you-you-shithead expression, and smashes his face against the mirror. His nose breaks on impact, glass stabs, digs, and catches, and drags down his cheeks and forehead. Blood everywhere, his blood. A tooth goes flying as his chin hits the dressing table’s pitted surface with a crack that sickens him even as the edges of his sight turn black, and the pain is more than noise can express. Blood on Devi’s knuckles. Fingers ripping out his hair.

No.

Everything pauses, then it all reverses in an instant, and he is left standing before a dirty mirror with too many faces looking back.

That already happened— a long long long long time ago

—and he is better now. Devi is better now too. He hasn’t talked to her in awhile but she is around, she is there, and everything is okay now. There is some blood dried into the floorboards still—was that were the stink is coming from?—but his scars have faded. He has forgiven, and he thought he had forgotten.

He’d gotten a new mirror and everything.

=

“Hi Nny.”

“Evening.”

Squee leans back on his heels before the underbelly of a machine Johnny has no understanding of and glares. With his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, smears of engine grease on his hands, sweat on his face, and looking like a mix of engineer, mad scientist, and responsible adult, Johnny has no idea how to treat the boy-now-man-next-door.

"How've you been? Whatcha been up to these days?"

There is something unspoken, something furious and accusing underneath the easy drawl of the questions. He can't imagine what Squee could be angry with him about. He is at a loss, also, at how to respond to the heavy questions thrown at him so casually. He struggles under their weight, unable to answer, unable to keep quiet, unable to lie.

Squee chuckles as he stands in one smooth motion centered on his knees and cleans his glasses with a rag from his pocket. "It's okay, shit, calm down. Not like I got a gun to your head or anything."

For some reason, he feels himself flinch. Squee's eyebrows knit and relax in an instant.

"Let's see," Squee muses. "You look like you, I'm pretty sure your car still works, and I'm currently over at Pepito's for some headfuck or another. Okay, I think I know what year this is. Awesome." He puts his glasses on and shares a smile that could cut glass.

"What are you talking about?"

Squee looks surprised, but after a moment laughs a quiet little laugh. "That's right, I forgot. This is the year you do your weird losing-time thing, yeah? Haha, you freaked me out even more all summer. I think I slept on the roof more than I did my own room. Oh God, this is even better!" He laughs again, louder, and claps a hand on the shoulder of the strange machine.

He can't think of any kind of response to this before Squee speaks again. "Fuck, Johnny, you really think seeing me at nine one day and twenty-three the next is normal?"

He thought about it. "Noooot really. No."

"That is exactly—what—How did you even recognize me?" He gestures at himself, and his eyebrows do something halfway between emulating surprise and gut-busting dislike.

"Who else could you be?"

This time his laugh is loud and body shaking, and he thumps the machine as if Johnny has said something incredibly witty. "Wow, okay, if that logic works for you it works for me, you crazy fuck."

He did not just hear that. "What did you call me?"

Squee smiles again, but his eyes remain cold and flinty and full of hate towards something—Johnny suspects—he has done in the future. Goddamnit, future self, way to ruin a good thing. But his hands still clench, his joints lock. How dare Squee? How could he?

But the boy-now-man-next-door acts as if nothing has changed. "So I can't remember how your art or lack thereof is working out in this little slice of time. You paintin' with any other color 'sides red?"

Why was Squee acting like this? "Of course I am."

He isn't.

Squee scratches his neck, scratches at scabs over long, thin lacerations in finger-shaped bruises, and Johnny wonders if what he's feeling now is how the man felt when he had still been a boy, and the scary neighbor man once crawled through the window to tell him a bedtime story. 

"You know, somehow I doubt that."

=

His fingers itch for activity. He hasn't left the house in days, maybe weeks. Does it matter?

He licks his lips and swallows, fighting down familiar urges. He can beat this.

=

"Do you have a problem with me?"

"Oh god oh god oh god why are you doing this—"

"Excuse me, I asked you a question."

Gently touch the controls, tack the pressure on, oh, just a little more. Just enough to make them scream.

=

The back of his head itches, and when he scratches his fingers come away red. No pain, just blood. So it isn't his then. But he can't remember killing anyone.

He looks away from his hand and out the window, at the outside world creeping in through the cracks between the boards. Outside there is no sun, no moon, no stars, no anything. His breath hitches.

It's raining.

He exhales.

The door is open though he doesn't remember leaving it so, so he takes the hint and walks outside. He inhales, tasting the hot summer smell of wet concrete and the cloying reek of decomposing bodies in his front yard. The million million light bulbs of the city throw their energy skyward, and the roiling clouds eat the light whole. A weird, orange glow from above casts the city into an otherworldly scene, and, feeling a little silly, he wonders if tonight might be the beginning of the apocalypse, and the idea doesn't sound half bad.

In the driveway, the concrete is slick with oil. He stands there a while, letting the rain wash the human grease out of his hair. It takes him just as long to realize his car is missing.

"That's funny," he says aloud, wiping the rainwater out of his eyes. "I don't remember teleporting home. Unless—was it Tuesday yesterday? I don't think it was, but—"

There is a soft, scared inhale of breath, a backwards scream. He turns, and there on the sidewalk is a gray woman in a bathrobe, faded coffee stains and food crusts all down her front. She is pointing at him, her face wide, frozen in a rictus grin of fear.

"What?" he asks, reality crashing into place with a shatter of glass ripping through his ears.

Her mouth moves, but the sounds that come out are backwards and insulting, and her eyes are fish eyes, wide and lidless and staring.

"What?" he asks again, sharply, his voice ugly and tasting of ashes.

"M-mon—" the woman wheezes.

Her throat is in his hands, and he doesn't recall moving from his empty driveway.

"What are you staring at? What do you want?!" he screams.

She gags and gurgles, her tubes for eating breathing talking standing bleeding; all of it collapsing under his fingers—

which hadn't been so thin a few weeks ago

—and the grin on his face is a mile wide. 

"Monster!" she whimpers as something cracks in her neck.

Monster? His hands loosen, cradle her jaw, as his mind tries to grapple with this. Why… Why would anyone call him that?

The pounding of feet, and someone wrenches the woman out of his grasp. "Jesus jump-roping Christ, Johnny!"

Dazed, he stares at the newcomer as if he's looking at everything through the wrong end of a telescope. The reek and the roaring of the public transit system returns with a bang of pneumatic doors, and Squee's mouth moves in angry shapes but the slut-mother's cooing comes out instead.

=

"You gonna pay or get off my bus?"

He looks at the bus driver, at the thick rolls of fat ballooning out underneath his sweaty, undersized uniform, a sneer pulling back the heavy flesh around pearly white teeth. He imagines jamming the steering wheel through the man's dislocated jaw and feels slightly better.

It's safe to imagine such atrocities. Imagine, but nothing more. He has to remember that.

"Hey kid! I'm talkin' to you!"

"Sorry," he manages through grinding teeth and a throat hot and restricted with anger. He deposits the required fare into the automated tray and darts across the yellow line before he can act upon his ideas.

He always has ideas.

He stumbles into an open seat as the bus jerks forward with a belch of black exhaust he can't see but can taste, heavy and gritty on his tongue. On his right, a plastic mommy bounces her little dolly on her knees. They are dressed in matching summer dresses. Disgusting.

How long has it been summer anyway?

He glances at the pair again and thumbs the volume on his CD player a little higher, fighting to keep his face neutral. He has never been fond of parents who treat their offspring like objects rather than the people they are going to be.

Something tugs on his sleeve and he recoils, crashing into the metal bars on his left. It takes everything he has not to retaliate against the foreign touch. His headphones are knocked askew by the impact, and Mozart's power vanishes, becomes tiny vibrations around his neck.

The baby, the child, the dull-eyed little girl has the ragged end of his sleeve in its shining, soaking wet hand. Through the fabric, he can feel its dampness, its heat. It babbles at him incoherently, green ooze dripping from its squashed little nose into the gaping, grinning mouth below.

"Oh, she likes you!" The mother cries, swooping in for the kill. Her smell washes over him—of heady perfume, hairspray, hysteria. He can see the makeup creases, the scars of plastic surgery, the shadow of a bruise on her shoulder half-hidden by her yellow sleeve. His mind jumps to all sorts of conclusions, and each one of them sickens him more than the last.

"Uh," he manages.

His hands twitch.

=

He is sick of this life again. All the old signs are there, everything points to one fact, but he can't bear going down that path, not yet. Later, later.

"'Later,' he says!" Crows the delighted Burger Boy. "Yes, perhaps when the scabs from the old shackles grow over the new he'll get off his scrawny ass and attempt to do something about all this!"

"Fuck you."

The Burger Boy looks at him imploringly, its meaty little hands clasped, its fangs retracted, the perfect image of a concerned friend in hideous checkered overalls. "In all seriousness, Johnny-boy, this is not something you can put off any longer. You must act now, or not at all."

"Go die in a hole."

"We both remember how effective that was the last time you tried that. Now, please—"

"Don't make me get the sledgehammer."

At least it had the decency to flinch at that, the little fuck.

The Burger Boy sighs, obviously frustrated. "I don't understand why you find it necessary to fight me so, Nny."

"Maybe it's because, oh, I don't know, you're trying to enslave me to my own kidneys?" He bites on the straw of his cherry Freezy hard enough to tear it. The plastic tastes like artificial fruit and latex gloves. "And don't call me Nny."

The Burger rolled its eyes, which shouldn't have been possible because it was pretending it was still ceramic. "So I'm no longer allowed that special little privilege, am I? Only the ghost of your dead, levitating bunny rabbit is?"

"Leave Nailbunny out of this."

"And those pathetic Doughboys as well? The very ones that conspired against you to 'serve their master', who, in case you've since forgotten, was the very creature you were charged with imprisoning behind a wall of blood and plaster?"

"That was D-Boy. Eff just wanted freedom. And really, can I blame him?" He bites the straw in half and spits it into the bathroom sink. In the mirror, his reflections mimic him, ten thousand mouths a-grinning.

"You're missing the point, though I'm hardly surprised."

A thought strikes him, and it's out of his mouth before he can think twice about it. "You know, if they ever started talking again, I think I'd still let them call me Nny. Sure, they were both exploiting my ever-increasing insanity and all that, but they were mine in the beginning. Unlike you."

It ignored the jab. "If they ever start talking again, it will be far too late."

=

There wasn't any soap in the bathroom.

=

"What the hell were you thinking?"

He blinks. "What?"

"Give me one goddamn reason, one very good goddamn reason you had for strangling my mother, or so fucking help me Johnny—!"

Squee is definitely reminding him of himself now. Great. Fantastic. Fuck.

"Um."

=

The Burger Boy scowls, its face transmogrifying into the fanged, drooling thing it really is. "You remember how terrible it was to toil under the merciless whip of the System! I know you do because I am a part of you, though you refuse to believe as such! And though you hate what I have to offer, you must realize that I am far more preferable as I am now than what I could become unless you tear free of the System's grip now!"

"I AM FREE!"

With a snap of ceramic he breaks it's right arm off, and the two of them scream in pain and hate, in the same voice, in one voice.

"I." He jabs at his chest with the arm, feeling it squirm under his fingers.

"Am." He drops it to the bloodstained linoleum.

"Free." He grinds the arm to dust under the heel of his boot. His reflections are too blurred, too scattered, to see how many follow suit.

Gripping the hole where a limb had been seconds ago, its ugly face twisted further by agony, the Burger Boy pants, "There is no such thing as freedom! No!" It screams, harsh and violent, as he opens his mouth to retort, "Listen to me. Hear me out. Please."

A heartbeat passes. Five. He closes his eyes, suddenly exhausted, and nods. The figurine sighs and leans against the faucet, settling its insect eyes on the spilled Freezy in the tub.

"Let's get one thing straight. I don't want you thinking that the puppet masters are singling you out for sport. God knows you aren't anything special. Everyone is a slave to one thing or another." It pauses to laugh bleakly. "Perhaps even those who fancy themselves the masters of this game of Monopoly must bow their neck to the chopping block one day. Who am I to know? I am but a series of chemical reactions created in the misfiring neurons of a sick man's brain. But never mind that. What I'm trying to say here is that there has been no other way. Ever. There has been no freedom, no choice. It is all preordained. This is the way of all things."

Every part of him rebels against this. No free will? Impossible. His life is his own, now more than ever. Yes, he had been a slave, once. But that had just been the luck of the draw, an accident, like winning the lottery or getting hit by a truck. It was… unpredictable, impossible to preordain. Heat in his chest, his jaw tight and creaking. "They told me—" He begins, his voice ready to rise into a shriek.

"It was only temporary. Even stone must crumble, Johnny."

His legs turn to jelly at a terrible, terrifying thought. He grips the sink, licks his lips and tastes salt and cherries and fear. In a soft, weak voice he barely recognizes as his own he finally asks, "Are they going to make me a flusher again?"

"They already have."

=

"Mom, can you make it back to the house on your own?" As he speaks, Squee performs a quick once-over on the gasping woman clinging like a burr to his chest. His face betrays him, showing the extent of the damage done even as he keeps his voice upbeat, a stream of happy reassurances pouring out with the rain even as his eyes confirm a far more dire prognosis. "Johnny and I need to, um, talk."

"Who—" Her voice fractures in her collapsed throat, and she chokes and dry heaves until her face is purple with strain. 

Squee holds her until she calms. "Johnny's our neighbor, Mom. We've lived next to him since—for as long as I can remember."

"O-oh. He looks ni-ice. I-is he a friend o-of yours?"

Squee makes a face remarkably comparable to the one a particularly vehement guest made once after Johnny had made him swallow a pound of nails. "Just—go inside, Mom. Go see if Dad's awake, okay? See if he'll call 911 for you."

"Okay sweetie." Her voice is wet and crackling, like stiff paper going soft beneath a steady drip of water. He recognizes the sound, and suspects now that he may have squeezed too hard. But she had insulted him, hadn't she? Called him a fucking monster. How could he let that go without proper retaliation?

"And tell Dad I'll be in in a min—oh festering whore tits, your eyes are bleeding."

"Don't swear, honey." 

"Sorry. Johnny?"

He can't help but flinch. "Yes?"

Squee swallows, looking almost frightened before setting his jaw and glaring hard at him. "You are going to go in your house, sit your ass down on your couch, and you are going to stay the fu—stay there until I can get Dad to give me the keys so I can get Mom to the ER. See, betcha I gotta do it 'cause Dad is an incompetent, loveless douche with a heart of coal. But I'm gonna do it fast, 'cause you and I? We need to talk."

"I—" 

Squee got him off with a sharp gesture. "Uh-uh. Not today. Not gonna play that game. Get in your house."

He got in his house.

=

"Slavery is inherent in all things, Johnny. It is only a question of to what. Once before you were selected to be a Flusher—"

"And I failed. Miserably, I might add."

The Burger Boy shook its head firmly. "You excelled."

"Clearly we're remembering my experiences in the After Life differently."

"Clearly you forget what kind of monster was imprisoned behind that wall."

"I never saw it. I died before I had the chance."

"It doesn't matter whether you saw it or not! What you had to do to keep it locked up should tell you more than enough."

"I—"

"I think somebody with a say in things liked what you were doing down here. Otherwise, why else tether you to this particular yoke a second time? If your memories of what Satan said to you are correct, you are practically the very antithesis of Flusher material!" It hobbles towards him, it's ungainly waddle exacerbated by its missing arm. Drool spills freely from between jutting fangs that cut at its lips with every overeager exclamation. "Take a good look at me, boy. The very moment the System slapped the manacles back on your wrists it began to take me as well. These changes are the result of your inaction."

His reflections smile bitterly. "You claim to be mine one minute and admit you're not the next. One or the other; it can't be both."

It stares at him with a steady, curious expression. "Can't it? The System is trying to take me from you. That is one truth. Another is that I am fighting it as best I can. Just as your Doughboys did, not so long ago."

He sneers and says nothing.

"I am resisting," the Burger Boy continues, "but I cannot win. The changes done to this form you've assigned me are the result of every foot of ground lost. You must see how much faster the transformation is in me compared to the Doughboys! You must understand that you are no longer a mere Flusher! For the Wall Monster remembers how effective it was to use your own madness against you, and now an eye is upon you, Johnny! The merciless, unflinching eye of the System in its entirety, and the System is more powerful than either of us can possibly comprehend."

He locks his fingers around the lip of the sink to keep from shaking. Slowly, the words trickle out of his mouth, pooling in a pile of warm paranoia in the drain. "Everything you say only goes to prove how much they have already conquered you, taken you from me and twisted you into some… thing. Some monster braying about hope even as it settles its jaws around my neck." 

He drops his gaze from the figurine, from the mirror, afraid of the triumph he knows he will find there. "I can't trust you."

The Burger Boy positively beams. "Now you're catching on."

=

"Nailbunny, what should I do?"

resist

"Who? Who do I fight? Him? The System?"

resist

"Whether I like it or not, he's my only source of information. Even if he's manipulating me, he at least has the decency to forewarn me, unlike his predecessors. If push comes to shove, I think I could beat him. But what—what if he's telling the truth? What if he can help me?"

resist

resist

"Nailbunny?"

resist

resist

resist

resist

resist

re—

=

"Please! Oh god, this hurts so much! Stop!"

"Shut up. The machine's barely even warmed up."

The sobbing blob tied to one of many torture devices he keeps humming at the ready cringes as his hand floats above the dial. He allows himself a brief smile.

"W-what do you want? Jesus Christ, I just m-met you! What did I even do?!"

He opens his mouth, a speech rife with injustice suffered under the merciless hands of a society dead from the neck up on the tip of his tongue, only to find himself unable to remember who this woman is and why he has her strapped into the Needler.

He laughs, and turns the dial up anyway.

=

—sist

=

The baby, the child, the dull-eyed little girl releases its iron grip on his sleeve and forgets him instantly, yet the mother perseveres, eager to speak with another human being. It seems he has no choice but to participate in a conversation with this woman until his stop, as every other seat is taken. And besides, it would be rude to just stand up and walk away.

You could kill her.

He frowns and ignores the voice, but nevertheless finds it unsettling. Meat's all for living and talking and eating and fucking and being an actual human, not murder. This is very out of character. Still pondering over it, he glances at the woman and finds her staring at him, expecting something from him.

"What?" he asks, itching to put his headphones on again. He really likes the piece vibrating against his collarbone. 

"Where did you buy your shirt?" the woman asks, as if she's repeating herself. She probably is.

He peels his eyes away from her surgically swollen lips long enough to glance down at himself. Black and gray, with an obnoxious splash of color amid the stripes that makes his head hurt. He doesn't recognize it.

"I, uh, don't remember," he says.

"Oh, that's too bad! My little brother loves that show."

He nods mutely, allowing his thumb to play with the volume of his CD player. The woman keeps talking, and Carl Orff rages at fate in a whispered rise and fall of Latin and violins.

The girl touches his hand again, and he accepts without protest that he will kill these two in their matching summer dresses with an eager blare of trumpets.

=

"Slavery to a broken machine or slavery to life and all its pains and pleasures." Meat touches his arm with its remaining hand. Through his sleeve, he can feel its dampness, its heat. "Decision time is now or never, Nny."

He laughs. "I am a broken machine."

=

Sometimes other people appear in the mirrors. Just brief flashes, overlapping the current other-self dominating the rest, and he knows it's foolish, but he can't help but wonder.

What is it like to have friends?

=

"—and it's being called the worst crime in the tri-county area since the café massacre two years ago. With twenty-seven dead at the scene and another twelve in critical condition, we here at the Channel 4 News Network can't help but agree. What do you think of it, Jeff?"

"It's a real atrocity, Nadine. The man who did this must be a real psycho, a total monster."

"Oh yes. And speaking of the killer, a woman—who has asked to remain anonymous—has stepped forward, claiming to have been at the club when the murders were committed. She also claims to be the one who halted the massacre by shooting the killer three times, despite having already been wounded."

"It is true a thus-far unidentified blood sample was recovered from the scene, as well as the bullets matching the woman's gun, but nothing conclusive has been determined yet. However, the woman has agreed to meet with a sketch artist once she's recovered from the attack, and a drawing of the killer will be sent to all media coverages when available."

"In the meantime, if anyone has any information regarding the killer or his whereabouts, we would appreciate it if you would call the number at the bottom of the screen. Please, don't hesitate—"

The reporter's face freezes for an instant before exploding in a supernova of white noise. Jolted out of a daydream, he instinctively reaches for the remote to mute the atrocious sound, but pauses before letting his hand fall. 

The sound is… oddly pleasant.

He leaves it on for three days.

=

He decides to call it Reverend Meat. It just… seems to fit.

=

He pauses at the couch only briefly, wondering what happened outside and what kind of reaction he should be having, but his legs give out and once he hits the floor it doesn't seem to matter anymore. Something skitters away, startled by the sound and vibrations of his body striking the wood. A minute passes or maybe five before it skitters back, probing his fingers with inquisitive antennae. His nerves won't respond to the signals his brain sends, to flinch away or crush the insect before it has a chance to grow bolder. He panics briefly, fear and helplessness clawing their way through his chest cavity, but then, as if a switch is flipped inside him, he relaxes.

The insect, whatever it is, takes a cautious nibble at the calloused tip of his ring finger. There is a tiny flash of pain, but no instinctive recoil from the source of the hurt. He is truly unable to move, than. The insect continues to bite, finding the outer layers of his skin tasty enough to merit further excavation. A second insect, crawling out of some unseen hole beyond his limited vision, joins the first, and is quickly followed by a third, a fourth, a dozen, too many to differentiate by feel alone and before he knows it an entire colony of carnivorous insects are biting into him, eating his flesh, burrowing under his clothes, his skin, crawling in his mouth and into his soft, wet insides, and he can't do anything to stop it.

It hurts, God it hurts, and he thinks wildly to himself that if he manages to live through this he will never ever strap a jar of bugs between another guest's teeth, ever again, because this is beyond torture, beyond ironic justice, beyond what words can describe: it just fucking hurts.

But then they reach his spinal cord and, like a city-wide power outage, his pain receptors begin to shut down, and then it's only the sounds of thousands of tiny mouths chewing. Until the insects turn their attention to his face, at least, being eaten alive isn't quite as bad as movies would lead him to believe. It's certainly slower, for one thing, and it lacks the nerve-wracking horror soundtrack, but perhaps that's for the better. The sounds he does hear are far from pleasant: squishing and crunching and gnawing and if he still had a stomach it'd probably be heaving by this point. He can see nothing but the dusty edge of darkness beneath his couch, but it's easy to imagine how gruesome he must look.

He's seen the results of this kind of thing with his own eyes, after all.

By the time they reach his head, they have already chewed through something vital in his chest and nowhere can he feel anything, any ache any pain any sadness any anger any loneliness and God is that an improvement. Consciousness fades to a dull spark somewhere in his increasingly exposed ribcage, perhaps somewhere just behind his collarbone, and he is hollowed out as rapidly as a properly upgraded power tool can scoop the mush out of a pumpkin. He is home to a colony of army ants, or a vast nest of ravenous, newborn spiders. That buzzing he hears could be the many vibrating wings of mating flies, or the first comb of a beehive being constructed among his bones. Certainly this is some species of insect that won't hesitate to swarm over a piece of meat—however stringy—before it has a chance to defend itself. Maybe it's even a school of land-bound piranha. He can imagine all sorts of culprits and has little trouble believing in all of them.

He wonders if honey from a human hive would be any good, but immediately discards the idea, revolted. He's practically thinking cannibalism here! Or, rather, self-cannibalism. Can a person self-cannibalize when they no longer have a digestive system? He'll have to try that sometime.

He wonders.

"Johnny?"

He blinks with magically undevoured eyelids, and is whole.

=

Sometimes, if he focuses hard enough, long enough, on these days when others flicker by in the mirrors, sometimes these flickers steady, become memorable faces, re-memorable people. And if memory serves, most of these people are dead.

The implications leave him with aching knuckles.

=

"I am not a monster."

"You just keep telling yourself that. Hey, maybe if you wish hard enough it might even come true one day!" Meat cackles and kicks his toothbrush into the toilet bowl.

"I wasn't always like this. I haven't always lived here. I haven't always been alone."

"How can you be so sure?”

Frustrated. Does he really have to state the obvious?

"No one is born knowing how to speak or read or write, or how to drive a car, or how to use money. Inherent knowledge is limited in humans. I may no longer have the memories of being taught, but the result is still the same. I know how to mix paints because I probably took classes in high school. I know how to use a camera, order dinner at a restaurant, do my own laundry, because someone else was there to teach me. Fuck, someone hated me enough to give me you."

"Who?"

"What?"

"Who gave me to you?" Meat's smile tries to appear kind, yet it is condescending, as if it is speaking to a child. "It's a simple enough question, dear boy."

"I—you said it was a girl—that we—" He swears. "You know I don't remember."

"Who gave you an understanding of the English language? Where is the license that proves you once passed a test at the DMV?"

"I—"

"Can you prove that you did not simply read the directions in some art books, or on the camera's packaging, or in a Laundromat? Perhaps, on the same strange whim that made you steal some Styrofoam Pillsbury Doughboy figurines, you came across my body yourself?"

"You said—"

"I thought you didn't trust me."

His knuckles burn white.

"Well, Johnny?"

"You know I can't prove any of that."

Meat's eyes glitter with delight. "Then, dear Johnny, how can you be so sure?"

=

At the edge of a stage bright with colored lights, he curls his hands around a microphone and smiles. The audience—

so many eyes watching him, and yet he couldn't be more relaxed

—has hushed; yet their screams still ring in his ears. 

He is not alone on this stage.

He doesn't dare turn to see who is playing softly behind him, afraid it'll be people the mirrors have shown him that are alive in some other Johnny's life but dead dead dead in his. His heart pounds, and for once the ache in his throat feels good. This is all so wonderfully terrifying, sickeningly familiar. Has he dreamed this before?

He comes to a stop inches from the audience's reaching hands. Good God, he has them right in the palm of his hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he breathes into the microphone, and every spark of life in this vast room is shining its light on him, and it is all so beautiful, so perfect, so alien. 

"What we have here is a moral conundrum."

=

"Bunny, I'm worried."

"I'm glad I'm not the only one. But really, there's so much to worry about. Please, elaborate for me."

"I haven't gone anywhere I might run the chance of killing someone in months. Just drive-thrus and that fully automated shopping center. Until recently, the only other people I've interacted with haven't bothered me or have been out of reach. It's only been these past couple weeks I've attempted anything more. Walking in parks, public transportation. You know."

"I know."

"What I can't figure out is how I ended up in that club at all."

The television is on, too low to be heard. In its pale blue glow, he carefully touches his chest, wincing when his fingers press against three tender circles: one on his sternum, another between his sixth and seventh ribs, and the last just beneath his ribcage. Tiny puckered scars ache in the center of each purple bruise.

"If I remember correctly, you recognized something who went inside and followed after."

"Why would—that doesn't sound like something I'd do."

"You stalked Devi for nearly a year."

He scowls. "Unnecessary, Bunny."

"Is it?"

He thumps his boots onto the coffee table and says nothing. Bunny presses on.

"It was a woman. Short hair, glasses, surprisingly compassionate to your… cause."

"Wait, do you mean that one woman with that shitty boyfriend I Tazered once? When I saw that movie—"

"Yes."

"Wow, really? I figured the Wall Monster got her after reality collapsed." He taps his chin thoughtfully. "What was her name? Did it start with a… a T?"

"Tess."

"Yeah!" He pauses. "She… recognized me first."

"Uh-huh."

"She practically ran into the building. They didn't even card her. She must have been a regular."

"Or she worked there."

"Or she worked there," he agrees. "That anyone could recognize me—" he trails off. A beat passes, and he continues on a different vein. "But what set me off? What caused me to break again, after I'd been doing so well?"

"That shouldn't be your chief concern, Johnny."

He looks at the disembodied rabbit head, little more than a skull now, and tiny and fragile-looking without it's maggot-riddled skin. "Oh?"

"You should be asking why you were sent back again."

=

Those other people in the mirror, those strangers, those friends, those dead bodies in motion, would sometimes pause beside his reflection. They smile, laugh; get mad and fight back and actually live; attack and be attacked; get scared and fight back and die. Some of it looks fun, some of it looks ridiculous. A lot of it scares him, more than he'd like to admit.

He wishes one of them would notice him.

His fingers touch glass.

[sxvethelastdance]

Sleep When We’re Dead

Fire God Liu Kang/Johnny Cage

Broken Timeline

 A direct sequel/companion piece to I’m on Fire Again by my lovely friend over @puttingfingerstokeys

Do be warned: This here fic is first-person POV and about as artful it gets for someone who embraces the ‘patching half formed thoughts together like it’s going out of fashion’ lifestyle.  

I am me, and not. It is a paradox that would have given me a headache, were I still human. The experience, the being of godhood. It is a conundrum no more solved by this sudden ascension than it is, had I deliberated on it as the Liu Kang of past and present. 

He does not hear me enter the room. Rather, he sees me touch down upon the ground with more grandeur than I’d thought I had any right to after the portal has closed.

Everyone has gone off to battle. War. That is what we must call it, because that is what the circumstances demand of us, sacrifice and retaliation. We are defined by our battles. The ones we win, the ones we lose, and the ones we cannot fight. I know that my friend feels confined by these definitions, forced to watch his daughter go off without him and let go of his love a second time. It burns at him like it burns at me, knowing that I cannot stop what comes next. Only that we must deal in the aftermath.

“Liu... You’re. Holy fu-” I put my finger to his lips and let out a ‘shhh’, noting the questions that fill his face. We must keep it down, lest the late Grandmaster’s students come running. My presence is intentional, but I would rather not deal with the effects of my interference outside of our reunion. He knows that I am here, and somehow… I think he knows that this is my final stop before I join the others. What I hope is left of them when all is said and done. One cannot predict Shang Tsung’s machinations, only the inevitability of his betrayal. 

“I try to keep my promises when I can.” I look into his eyes and I see hurt and a fire that matches mine. I see his incomprehension and interest, and I find that the fire that envelops me is not in the literal. 

“I’m uh. Diggin’ the mop-top.” Or it is, and the cause is Johnny himself. That is more likely. My hands are at his arms, the same way his had been on mine all those years ago. He jokes, something about a “role reversal” and Reptile having been some variation of a “demon scaly” and I laugh. I am not above that, I will never be above that. Nor do I see myself above him outside of the most literal of contexts here. 

I want to make up for lost time, but with so few hours (minutes, moments. They are all one in the same) until my presence is required at the hourglass, I know that I cannot close the wound that I have opened. But there is time. Enough for one a last kiss. Because no matter what happens at the dawn of time, the things that have come to pass under my eye, they cannot stand. 

I do not lie. 

I did not lie. 

I lied.

What else can I do, when faced with enemies who have lied and slaughtered their way through the best of us? Who fight tooth and nail for the undoing, even if it is their own? It is madness, and perhaps that is what is required this time. Madness. 

I think no more on the subject when his lips are on mine, and that phantom flame ignites in my chest. I haven’t seen him in 25 years, and yet I saw him hours ago. Another paradox, another longing. He moves with purpose, as do I. We are both desperate and lonely in our own way. Our paths, crafted as they were by the mad titan were ours to walk. And walk we did until the time where we met again. I wrap my hand in his, still clutching the headband bestowed upon him by my other self, and he presses himself to me as if I’ll dissolve like the sands that dictate our lives. 

“You know the deal, kicky longstockings.” Johnny says, a watery laugh escaping him. I find beauty in it the same way that I find beauty in the creases of his face, the mark of his survival. No longer am I bitter about this, that I died young, no longer do I mourn for the man I never got to be. I have made peace with that, I have let go. I do not let go of him, my other hand squeezing tight enough to deepen the bruises that color him from what I assume are the previous night’s encounters. I know the deal, so I seal his mouth with mine again, and we take what comfort we can from this, my fingers wiping away at what tears have gathered at the corner of his eyes. 

He brushes the hair from my face (what I have left out in my ascension) and I feel sparks, both phantom and real dance upon my skin. The way that Johnny shakes out his hand gives me pause, but he’s having none of that. 

“I’m good, I’m good- Just...Whoa.” 

‘Whoa’ indeed. Fire is natural for me, but Lord Raiden’s gifts… I am unsure of how to describe it. They amplify the powers that I possess, but I am not completely unaware of the nature of these forces combined. This is another thought that loses itself in the hands that had found their way to my chest somewhere along my deliberation, a smirk planted firm on Johnny’s face. I may be a God, but the heat that washes over me is just as I felt it when I was alive. I am alive, death does not feel like this. My hands are hot on his skin, flushed red with delight. He knows what this does to me; and I know what I am going to do about it.

Some things never change.

This makes climbing atop him less an impulse and more an inevitability, though I am mindful of his leg. His current state of undress makes this endeavor a small undertaking, even if he is anything but. And much to my disappointment he has removed his hands from where they are in favor of my pants. Though I cannot stay mad for long with where his hands are. His neck is a sufficient target for my frustrations. 

We try to take our time, but I have mourned him once and he has mourned me twice, all to prepare himself for the unanticipated third time around. I cannot help the way my hands pull him to me anymore than he can help the way that his fingernails dig into my shoulder blades, welts in their wake. Sinking into him ignites a flame that not even my hottest strikes can compare to, and kissing him is just as I remember it. Better in some ways, even. The value of time comes full circle here, and it makes my heart beat without mercy. I know he feels the same, if not for the rapid-fire teasing, then for the hitch of his breath when I bear down upon him.

“Still have it in you, old timer?” He breathes deep through his nose, sweat gathering on his skin. It’s more tantalizing than it has any right to be. But what is Johnny, if not someone known to break the rules of what he can and cannot have. 

“If the ‘it’ is you, then sure thing, turbo.” He grins fiercely, and we are at odds again. If there’s anything else to be said here, it is that Johnny Cage has a talent for pushing just where he needs to for what he wants. I can also say that i shamelessly rise to the task, teeth and tongue to put that mouth to rest. 

One of the most fearsome aspects of godhood is the idea that I could go on for what would be eternity to a human. There is a satisfying ache in my bones, but I feel no real exhaustion, tangled up in him. His scent, that insatiable wit, the sunglasses that catch what little light that enters the room, characterized by their lack of presence on his face. It’s strange to see the man without them. But I find that I do not mind, having spent more time than I could ever bring myself to admit peering behind them. Putting together the pieces of a man with a deceptive wit and a need to be understood for more than an image. A well-crafted one, but an image nonetheless. 

This realization does not ‘hit’ me so much as it spreads. In my heart, in my lungs, in my veins. I see someone I understand. Someone I never had the chance to fully know, but someone I understand. That is what makes it so hard to part from him. Unlike my other self, it is daylight, and I cannot spare him the pain of watching me go. I can tell him that he has done well, that I am proud, and he can scold me for being so formal, something so uniquely Johnny to say. The air is tense, and I know what I must do. We both know  that it’s time.

I had moved to open the portal when he stopped me, resistance keeping me from slipping forward through the time stream. He hasn’t let go of my hand. Nor I of his. 

It seems we are both having trouble here. 

“Liu?” 

“Yes, Johnny?” He looked at me with a fondness that dissolved my tension and I squeezed his hand, my heart beating. 

“Kick the old lizard’s ass for me. Maybe slap baldy on the dome if she’s still up and tickin.” There’s humor in his voice, but I am aware of what this communicates. He is saying “do not forget me.” And how could I ever do such a thing? Johnny Cage is unlike any man I have met, and for this I feel that the blessing was not the gifts which bring me above my mortality, but the chance to meet someone so bright and blinding. There is much room in my heart for him, I have missed him and I cannot find the words to tell him this, I wish I could. But I cannot. I can, however, bring his hand to my lips. His eyes, blue as the dawn of time (I have seen it, felt it. I know now.) are wide. He hadn’t expected that. But even I am known to have the element of surprise every now and again.

“I will tell them who it’s from.” And then we are laughing again. I cannot help but pull him into another kiss. There’s a certain delight in the way his stubble, what little of it there is, scratches my cheeks. This feels less like goodbye, and more like “until we meet again.”

In another time and place, I know that we will. 

[porchwood]

THG Reread: Interesting Tidbits from Ch 1

Disclaimer: I’ve never taken part in any official THG reread/discussion and I essentially read the book in isolation, so anything I say in these posts may well have been discussed and dismissed years ago.

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and crawled in with our mother.

I find it interesting that Prim leaves Katniss to find comfort with their mother, especially since Katniss seems to see herself as Prim’s sole protector and provider. Are Prim and Mrs. Everdeen closer than Katniss realizes (having such an abrasive relationship with her mother as she does) or is it simply that Mom will always be Mom and in a moment of terror most children prefer the embrace of their mother over a sibling?

Also: sleeping directly on a rough canvas-covered mattress? Are bed sheets are that great a luxury in the Seam? :(

I swing my legs off the bed and slide into my hunting boots. Supple leather that has molded to my feet. I pull on trousers…

So she gets out of bed and puts on her boots, then her trousers... So...girl’s a firefighter, right? :D

(Sorry for the crummy pics. Apparently the Tumblr presence of the Emergency! fandom is microscopic at best - I guess that happens with a ‘70s show :P - so these are screenshots I made from the S1 DVD, because yes, I’m that big of an Emergency! fangirl and you can never have too much Johnny Gage!)

It gives “girl on fire” a whole new meaning!! ;D

All merriment aside, we know that fire was a constant danger in the Seam, with its “old wooden homes embedded with coal dust,” so it’s entirely possible that residents slept with trousers and boots in readiness at the bedside, to be stepped into at a moment’s notice for a rapid escape if needed.

I…tuck my long dark braid up into a cap…

This has been discussed in previous rereads so it really isn’t news, but I’d love to see more Katniss-in-a-cap popping up in fics and fanart. THG opens in summertime and she’s still wearing the cap, so it was definitely a staple of her wardrobe! (And it brings us a little closer to the girl-disguised-as-a-boy trope, which is one of my all-time faves! :D)

(Behold this adorable @ghtlovesthg rendering!)

Our part of District 12, nicknamed the Seam, is usually crawling with coal miners heading out to the morning shift at this hour…

Somehow I had always (erroneously) assumed that there was just one twelve-hour shift that all the miners worked (ex. 6am-6pm). Since artificial light would be required inside the mines anyway, I suppose they could work around the clock with no regard to the sun and stars. Folks who live in/near coal mining communities: do they generally operate 24 hours a day or is there some arbitrary cut-off point in the evening? (I’m sorry I’m so ignorant about this!)

Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt…

Has anyone else figured out who these mysterious additional hunters are??

I watch as Gale pulls out his knife and slices the bread. He could be my brother. Straight black hair, olive skin, we even have the same gray eyes. But we’re not related, at least not closely.

First off: it truly befuddles me that Katniss’s hair color is stated on page 8 of THG (though, interestingly, never explicitly afterward) and yet it’s unusual - maybe even rare - to find fanart or even fics that depict her with black hair. Why is that? I was in love with her long black hair from moment one (truly black hair is unique, at least in my part of the world, and so striking to boot) so I probably belabor it a bit in my own writing, but it’s such an exquisite feature, why would you not?

Secondly: “He could be my brother.” That feels significant, and not merely in the “we look alike” sense. I’ve been working on a post about how Gale came into Katniss’s life in a very significant fashion after her beloved father’s death and she was drawn to him because of certain (I would venture to say striking) commonalities, but as I was wrapping it up last night (and sharing various details with my favorite sounding-board @ghtlovesthg), I realized there was a whole - vitally important - flipside to my theory that absolutely cannot be overlooked. So I might not get that finished till we’re on CF or even MJ. (No spoilers just in case someone pips me at the post - pun inadvertent ;) - but I think it’s pretty cool!)

And thirdly, because I can’t resist: I headcanon that Gale and Katniss are cousins through their great-great-grandfather (Galen Greenbrier, if anyone cares :D), who had two daughters (Aisling and Elspeth), who each had a daughter (Wren and Ashpet), who had Hazelle and Jack (Mr. Everdeen), who begat Gale and Katniss, respectively. Ergo: related but “not closely,” per canon. :)

With both of us hunting daily…

I’d always thought Gale and Katniss only hunted a few times a week, with Sundays being their largest haul/best trading day. (“Usually we devote all of Sunday to stocking up for the week.”) I know Twelve is an unusually permissive district at this point in time, but if two Seam kids were sneaking back and forth under the fence every single day and (forgive me) flaunting the fact by selling game in town (and when did they do this? before school, after, both?), surely, inevitably, the Peacekeepers would have been obliged to do something about it. Or were there some trips where Gale and Katniss only brought back enough for their own families, making their illegal activities not quite so blatant?

Cross-referencing with Catching Fire, I find Katniss saying, “Back when we were in school, we had time in the afternoons to check the lines and hunt and gather and still get back to town to trade” - exactly what time did they get out of school and how late were they doing these trades (not to mention, when did anyone get homework done)?? - but she also says it’s “an hour-and-a-half trek” just to check the snare line. I guess it isn’t impossible, but it seems a much more extensive (and time-consuming!) arrangement than I would have thought they could get by with, even in Twelve.

We easily trade six of the fish for good bread…

Like the rest of you, I’m trying to figure out who’s selling this “good bread” at the Hob. For some odd reason, at one point I thought maybe the bakery’s day-olds were sold there, à la:

They could potentially sell said day-olds at less of a discount than merchant clientele would demand but the reduced prices would be low enough for some Seam clientele to afford, and of course, even day-old bakery bread would be superior to homemade tessera bread (and therefore: “good bread”). 

I’m not sure where I got the “bakery outlet” idea (I think it was all the early canonverse fics where Katniss ran into Peeta in the Hob, so I figured he was running a day-olds stall or something) but having been away from it for awhile, I actually kind of like it! :)

You become eligible for the reaping the day you turn twelve.

I’m going to wax exceedingly about reaping ages in another post, but for the moment: I presume this rule means that anyone who turns twelve between reaping days becomes eligible for the subsequent reaping, correct? So if we arbitrarily set the reaping at, say, June 1, someone whose birthday is on June 2 wouldn’t be eligible till the following year. (Which would be especially terrible for your 18-yr-old reaping: being a day away from 19 and freedom, of a sort, but still having to go through one last reaping.) Now I think of it, it’s possible Career districts took advantage of this. Highly invested parents in a Career district could have planned their pregnancies with the intent of a late summer birth (i.e., a month or two after reaping day) so the resulting children would have the advantage of extra months up on other tributes in their same age group.   

On the flipside of this: Prim, whose birthday is in late May, would be an especially young tribute, since she’s only just turned twelve (think school kids with summer birthdays who don’t turn the “right age” for their grade till 1-3 months after school is out), and similarly Katniss, whose birthday is May 8, would be on the young side of the group of sixteens. 

“Pretty dress,” says Gale.

Madge shoots him a look, trying to see if it’s a genuine compliment or if he’s just being ironic. It is a pretty dress, but she would never be wearing it ordinarily. She presses her lips together and then smiles. “Well, if I end up going to the Capitol, I want to look nice, don’t I?”

Now it’s Gale’s turn to be confused. Does she mean it? Or is she messing with him? I’m guessing the second.

Gaaah, so much going on here! I can’t decide if I want to make a proper Gadge post, so in the meantime, here’s some food for thought:

1) Why does Gale remark on her dress? Really - give me suggestions, because I’ve been turning it over in my head. If it’s meant to be ironic and she gives him sarcasm in reply (as seems to be the quintessential Gadge dynamic :D), it’s odd that he would be confused and not have a volley/riposte/etc of his own on deck. I mean, Katniss doesn’t seem to know (or at least, doesn’t clarify in her narration) whether or not it’s a compliment -

2) Which is interesting, because she guesses straightaway that Madge is “messing with him” in reply. ;)

3) Gale gives Madge what outwardly seems like a compliment and this is what ensues. One might surmise they’ve done this before... :D I mean, if there was no precedent, Madge would’ve just said “thank you” and exchanged money for berries. Since the mayor is such a valuable customer (being one of very few who can afford their asking price for strawberries), it’s interesting that Gale would antagonize Madge and risk losing the strawberry trade - not to mention bringing up the subject of tesserae at the mayor’s back door on reaping day! Does he take similar potshots at other merchants or is it just Madge? Is he irked (even threatened) by Katniss’s friendship with Madge? (I love that Katniss immediately defends Madge in the face of Gale’s tesserae rant. ♡) Does he feel like he can sound off at her (with impunity) because she’s Katniss’s friend? Or is he secretly crazy about her and resigned to the fact that he’ll never get her but the reminders of the impassable gap between them still incense him? Sorry, my hand slipped there for a sec. ;) 

Gale knows his anger at Madge is misdirected.

I didn’t recall this line from previous reading and it just makes me happy. :)

To my surprise, my mother has laid out one of her own lovely dresses for me. A soft blue thing with matching shoes. [...]  For a while I was so angry, I wouldn’t allow her to do anything for me. And this is something special. Her clothes from her past are very precious to her.

I’d never caught the “matching shoes” bit before! Do you suppose Katniss means dyed [blue] to match/covered with matching fabric (so that’s what they do at the shoe shop!) or simply that they go well with the dress? And if she means that the shoes literally match the dress: is this a particularly special dress (hence particularly special shoes) or is it customary for merchant girls to order shoes to match their dresses?

And further: why this year? It doesn’t sound like Mrs. Everdeen has offered one of her apothecary-era dresses before, which could have been due to Katniss’s repeated rebuffs, but still: why offer one of those very precious dresses this year? Did she have a feeling about this reaping? Or is she starting to see Katniss as a young woman, not just an angry, resourceful child? (Coupled with the fact that she subsequently puts Katniss’s hair up, the latter makes a lot of sense.) 

On a sidenote: Has anyone written meta on the significance/usage of braids in Twelve? (Notwithstanding WTM: Ch 13 and all that Mellark bridal braids/braid coils/engagement hairpin business.) Ex. Does a girl "graduate” from pigtails to a single braid around puberty and then to a crown braid as a young woman/wife, or does she/her mother simply style it however she feels on any given day? I’m just now realizing that I consistently picture reaping day!Prim in pigtails because of the film, but it doesn’t state in the text how her hair is styled, so it might be in a single braid or held back at the temples with a clip or even worn loose.

The square’s surrounded by shops, and on public market days, especially if there’s good weather, it has a holiday feel to it.

I’m really curious about “public market days,” since the Hob seems to be Twelve’s primary market - or at least, has become so in fanon - but Katniss makes a clear distinction between them (“Make only polite small talk in the public market. Discuss little more than trades at the Hob, which is the black market where I make most of my money”). Is this public market like a farmer’s market or a craft fair - or a bit of both? Is it simply the “merchant version” of the Hob? How often are they held? Who gets to sell at this market, and what sort of wares are we talking about? (Is it just merchants bringing their product outside, like a sidewalk sale?) Does the Capitol/Justice Building collect a fee from everyone wanting a stall/booth/table?

Edit: While looking up details for a different post, I found this passage:

Gale and I went to the market on the square so that I could buy dress materials [for Prim].

So apparently they sold fabric and notions in the public market? (Not at, say, a mercantile/general store?) I’m wholly confused now!

[utexaspress]

Music from A Perfectly Good Guitar

Enjoy the selection on Spotify here.

Discovering Good Music by Chuck Holley

In the Fall of 2007 I began a project interviewing and photographing guitarists. I asked each professional to single out one guitar in their arsenal and explain why it was important to them. The result of that eight-year effort is the book, A Perfectly Good Guitar. I’m an unabashed music fan and, when I began this project, I considered myself well-versed about music from different genres. I knew about the good stuff—or at least I thought I did. It didn’t take long to realize how many great working musicians are out there I didn’t know about. Reality set in; it became painfully obvious how much I had to learn.

As the project picked up steam, artists who came to my attention fell into one of three categories: There were the seasoned professionals whose recordings I already owned. Players like Dave Alvin, Joanna Connor, Alejandro Escovedo and Bill Kirchen come to mind. Sure, I had a Blasters record with Alvin and his brother on it and I had one of his early solo albums. My collection of Joanna Connor music consisted of one early release on Blind Pig Records and I owned three or four Escovedo albums. In the case of Kirchen, I knew all about his days with Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. As for his solo work, I didn’t have a clue. In the ensuing years, my interests turned to other artists.

Then there were the artists with whom I was familiar; I’d heard of them, but didn’t own any of their recordings. I knew the music of Sisters Morales but I didn’t own any solo recordings by Lisa Morales. The same was true of Bill Frisell. From reading album credits I knew at one time Sonny Landreth played in John Hiatt’s band, The Goners, but even though I’d heard of Sonny, I didn’t own any of his music. Finally, there were the artists who were new to me. They weren’t new to the scene, but I wasn’t familiar with their work. Toronzo Cannon, Johnny Nicholas and Jamie Lin Wilson are three such artists. I enjoy turning my friends on to good music. I’ve told them about some of the terrific musicians and songwriters I’ve discovered. They listen politely until their eyes glaze over. My friends are creatures of habit, but aren’t we all? I subscribe to the Duke Ellington school of thought: “There are two kinds of music. Good music and the other kind.” If I like it, I’ll listen to music regardless of labels. At the same time, it’s difficult to write about this without resorting to categorization. The artists profiled in A Perfectly Good Guitar represent a variety of genres. I’ve never understood the guy who claims to just like only country music or classical or jazz. In my opinion, that’s like saying you only like the color blue. This blog features ten artists from A Perfectly Good Guitar. These ten artists represent personal discovery. Their genres don’t matter. They’re just labels, but do they mean anything?

“All By Myself” – Dave Alvin Dave Alvin spent his youth sneaking into blues bars with his older brother, Phil, to see and learn from masters like Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, and Lightning Hopkins. In 1979 he and Phil formed the seminal roots rock band, the Blasters. They released four influential albums before Dave left to join the band, X, and later embark on a solo career that produced several critically acclaimed albums, including the Grammy Award-winning Public Domain. He and Phil reunited in 2014 to record Common Ground, their tribute album to Big Bill Broonzy, and later a blues album, Lost Time. Dave recalls how he purchased a 1934 National resonator guitar. He used that guitar on the Broonzy song “All By Myself,” the first track on Common Ground.

“Walk It Off” – Toronzo Cannon Toronzo Cannon grew up in his grandfather’s house near Theresa’s Lounge on the South side of Chicago but he didn’t take up guitar until he was twenty-two. His first band gig was playing in a reggae band but after a couple of years, the blues beckoned. Toronzo learned his craft by playing in bands fronted by two of Chicago’s finest, Wayne Baker Brooks and Joanna Connor. In 2001 he struck out on his own. By day, he drives a bus for the Chicago Transit Authority. At night, he’s a bluesman. As subject matter, infidelity is a mainstay for the blues and Toronzo handles it with style in “Walk It Off,” from The Chicago Way.

“It’s a Woman’s Way” – Joanna Connor Joanna Connor moved to Chicago in 1985 from Worces­ter, Massachusetts, to hone her skills in the Chicago blues scene. She landed a spot in the 43rd Street Blues Band at the famed Checkerboard Lounge a few months after her arrival. The 43rd Street Blues Band was the house band playing behind up-and-coming artists as well as legendary figures in blues and soul. In addition to playing at the Checkerboard, part of her education was learning to play slide guitar in regular tuning from Dion Payton. Dion proved to be a demanding teacher for the 20-something Connor. Her slide skills are on full display on “It’s a Woman’s Way” from her 2016 album, Six String Stories.

“Heartbeat Smile” – Alejandro Escovedo Alejandro Escovedo, a native of San Antonio, Texas, has had a long and varied career. His rock and roll journey began with his first band in the 1970s, the Nuns, a punk band. After the demise of the Nuns came Rank and File and the True Believers. Through his songwriting, Alejandro has become a force in alt country and rock and roll. His most recent album is Burn Something Beautiful. This album is a calorie burner. Listen to “Heartbeat Smile” and turn it up. “Pipeline” – Bill Frisell Bill Frisell has a lengthy discography with music ranging from pop and rock, to bluegrass, roots and jazz. The seasoned Grammy-winning artist is admired by his peers and his skills are in demand by other artists. He has more than thirty albums to his credit. Twenty five years ago, a friend told me the world would be a better place if everyone listened to the jazz pianist Bill Evans. She was right, of course. Today I would amend that to include Bill Frisell. Bill recorded “Pipeline,” an instrumental first released by surf rock band, The Chantays in 1962. It’s the opening track on his 2014 album, Guitar in the Space Age.

“Rockabilly Funeral” – Bill Kirchen Bill Kirchen, an alum of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, will forever be associated with the group’s hit song, “Hot Rod Lincoln,” which features his distinctive Telecaster licks. The Commander Cody band was among the pioneers of the country-rock sound in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to recording and touring with his band, Too Much Fun, Bill has recorded with, among others, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Arlen Roth, Redd Volkaert, and Sammy Hagar. Bill plays a mix of rockabilly, country, and blues. He revisits a few of the songs he played in his years with the Cody band on his album, Seeds and Stems, along with songs he regularly performs live including “Rockabilly Funeral.

“The High Side” – Sonny Landreth Called the “King of Slydeco,” Sonny Landreth has a bluesy, rock-infused way of playing slide guitar that is all his own. While his right hand picks, slaps, and taps the strings on his Stratocaster, his left hand frets notes while using a slide. The Louisiana native soaked up the musical influences of zydeco and the Deep South, eventually joining Clifton Chenier and his Red Hot Louisiana Band. His second solo album, Down in Louisiana, led to his work with John Hiatt in the studio and in Hiatt’s band, The Goners. He has also recorded with John Mayall, Johnny Winter, and Buckwheat Zydeco among others. Eric Clapton has called Landreth one of the most advanced, and most under-appreciated, guitar players in the world. “The High Side” can be found on Sonny’s 2015 album, Bound By the Blues.

“I Am the Weakest” – Lisa Morales Lisa Morales, with her sister Roberta, formed the Americana band Sisters Morales. For more than 20 years the band toured and released four albums. They served up a mix of Americana, pop and rock, singing some songs in English and others in Spanish. Lisa released her solo debut, Beautiful Mistake, in 2011 and is now completing a follow-up album. After I discovered Beautiful Mistake, it joined a handful of other albums I play frequently. “I Am the Weakest” is the first track and it’s best played loud. “Kid Man Blues” – Johnny Nicholas Johnny Nicholas’s love of blues and American roots music goes back to a childhood surrounded by R&B, blues, country music, and rock music from the ’50s and early ’60s. He has played in and fronted many bands, including Guitar Johnny and the Rhythm Rockers, Asleep at the Wheel and the Texas All-Stars. Johnny now tours with his band Johnny Nicholas and Hellbent. “Kid Man Blues” is from his 2016 release, Fresh Air.

“Moving Along” – Jamie Lin Wilson Jamie Lin Wilson is a singer, songwriter, musician and a veteran of two alternative country-roots bands, first with The Gougers and later with The Trishas. After leaving the Gougers Jamie recorded a solo EP before joining three friends to form the Trishas, an all-female, alt-country band. The Trishas recorded an EP and toured nationally before releasing a critically acclaimed album, High, Wide and Handsome, in 2012. Her first solo album, Holidays & Wedding Rings, was released in 2015. The album title is taken from her song, “Moving Along,” so listen closely.

Chuck Holley (Maryville, Missouri) has worked as a commercial photographer in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota; a general assignment reporter and photographer for a southwest Iowa newspaper; and a photographer for a university.